What He Said

Here's the deal:  I heard from the editor and they liked it just fine.  If it's been posted yet I haven't seen it, so, since I know everyone has been waiting with baited breath, here's what I wrote for that new website I'm "trying out" for...

 

Around the League with Rich Kincaide

“The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good and it could be again…”

“Terence Mann” (played by James Earl Jones) from Field of Dreams

Nice speech, James Earl. It turns out not to have been true, but nice speech nonetheless.

The game, “the constant through all the years”, has changed.

Last week, Tigers’ starter Edwin Jackson did not venture out of the dugout for the 7^th inning at Comerica Park in spite of the fact that he was locked in the very definition of a pitchers duel against New York: a scoreless tie through six. (The Detroit bullpen promptly made baseball history in the top of the 7th, allowing the Yankees to score 10 runs—although to be fair only 7 of them were earned—as Detroit became the first team in American League history to allow at least ten runs in another teams at-bat in a game in which the score was 0-0 in the 7^th inning or later. The Tigers, as you may have heard, lost.)

Why did Jackson get the hook? Simple. He’d pitched 117 pitches and when it comes to heaving the spherical object from 60’ 6” these days, that statistic, the Pitch Count, is the only stat that counts. It’s not just Detroit Manager Jim Leyland, either. It’s the game. Baseball has changed.

Last Friday night, Jake Peavy of the Padres was pulled after 8 innings in the midst of a two-hit shutout. He’d thrown101 pitches, you see. Peavy’s mound foe, LA’s Clayton Kershaw, lasted seven shutout innings. He’d allowed only four hits and had yet to offer up his 100^th delivery of the night. On Sunday in San Francisco, it mattered not that the Giants Barry Zito was twirling a gem: a two-hit shutout through 7. Zito, having lobbed it up there 101 times just like Peavy had, did not come out to start the 8^th. The opposing pitcher, Colorado’s Jason Hammel, exactly as Detroit’s Jackson had been against the Yankees five days earlier, was pulled after six in 0-0 ballgame. Hammel’s pitch count? 79.

I’m got to tell you something. I’ve known Major League pitchers who wouldn’t have given it a second thought if they’d thrown 179 pitches through six as long as the other team was goose-egged. They’d be staying in the ballgame.

Seriously, can you imagine what would have happened if Jack Morris had a shutout going through 6 and Sparkly Anderson informed him that he would not be answering the bell for the 7^th inning? I’ll tell you what: A fistfight in the dugout.

In 1963, Juan Marichal threw a 16-inning complete game. Do you suppose he did that in 100 pitches or less? If they even kept a Pitch Count back then and I don’t think they did (and if they did I can’t find it) I read somewhere that Marichal said he was certain he’d thrown at least 250 pitches in that game and probably more. His opponent that day, Warren Spahn, only went 15-and-a-third innings. That’s because some guy named Willie Mays took him deep in the bottom of the 16^th inning for the game’s only run in a 1-0 San Francisco win. I think it’s safe to say Spahn threw slightly more than 100 pitches, also.

Marichal, whose 1963 line included 25 wins and 18 complete games, pitched for 15 years in the Majors; won more games (191) than any other pitcher in the 1960’s and is in the Hall of Fame. Spahn, who was 42 the day he went 15-and-a-third in what has to be one of the hardest-luck losses ever, only won 23 games that season. Perhaps it occurred to him at some point that if the result of that one game had been reversed he and Marichal would have each won 24? In any event, Spahn retired as the winningest left-handed pitcher in big-league history with a career win total of 363. He’s in the Hall, too. Of course.

Now, 46 springs later, if you want see a guy to finish what he started, you have to look to Zach Greinke of the Royals, he of the 6-0 record and the 0.40 ERA. (Really? A 0.40 ERA when you are one-third of an inning off the league lead in innings pitched? 2 earned runs allowed and it’s May?) Through Tuesday, 85 pitchers had started at least one of the 186 games played this season in the American League. Only 5 of those186 games (2.7%) have featured a 9-inning complete game and only 3 pitchers have done it. Greinke himself has thrown 3. His highest pitch count in any game this season is111, meaning he seems to be the only pitcher out there who knows that if you want to be there a the end one must do it with both dispatch and efficiency.

Finally, somebody asked me about the Wings/Ducks series and I told them the thing that worried me the most about Anaheim was not that the Ducks had outplayed the Sharks in becoming the eighth 8^th seed to knock off a #1 seed since San Jose became the first team to do it against Detroit in 1994 (they did), nor was it that their goaltender stopped 220 of 230 Sharks shots (95.7%), nor was it that next to Detroit the Ducks had more players on their roster (12) who had already won a Stanley Cup than any other team in the playoffs. No, it was none of those things. What scared me the most about the Ducks was the name of the arena where Anaheim plays their home games. I heard somebody who should know better call it “The Pond” the other day on the radio. Sorry, it’s not. It’s called the Honda Center. With the way things are going in Detroit and with the way things are going over at General Motors right now, does that strike anybody else besides me as, well, ominous? Could it perhaps be unlucky? Did anybody besides me stay up to see the end of Game 3 there? Would you say what will forevermore be known in Detroit as “The Washout” qualifies as unlucky?

I heard another radio guy a couple of days ago refer to the Ducks goalie as “Miller”. Uh, sorry, it’s Hiller. I’m pretty sure you spell it G-I-G-U-E-R-E.